The Naked Detective(67)

I said, "But if they're following—"

She said, "What's the difference? Face it, we're not fooling anybody. Whoever's following— they've seen where we came from and they've seen where we're going. We've got shovels sticking out the trunk, for God's sake! So let's just go ahead and force their hand"

Her vehemence embarrassed, impressed, and unsettled me. Something about it did not seem right. She was almost too determined, too unshakable. Either she was very brave ... or she had nothing to be afraid of. She was in cahoots with someone, after all. Someone who would appreciate her recovering the pouch. And would deal with the gullible idiot who'd helped to dig it up.

Was it possible? After the kisses and the confidences? Not knowing seemed as unbearable as anything else that could possibly happen. I chewed my lip, and blew air out through my teeth, and reached once again for the door handle. I said to Ozzie, "Can you come back for us in an hour and a half?"

He looked down at his watch. "Call it six- fifteen?"

"Fine. And Oz—try not to get followed."

We climbed out of the cab, and got the tools out of the trunk, and walked down the pier to get the launch to Sunset Key.





34


The launch ride was a somber one.

Boarding with us were half a dozen residents of the private island. They wore seersucker shirts and beautiful belts. The women carried straw bags and the men had fancy loafers. They didn't sit near us, didn't even look at us. A class thing, I guess. We hunkered near the stern, and didn't talk, and tried to keep our rakes and shovels from chattering as the launch bounced in the harbor chop.

On Sunset Key we walked up a floating ramp, then checked in with the security guard. The poor guy was around sixty, and they made him wear a mock-Colonial getup, with knee socks and a shirt with epaulettes. He pushed a sign-in sheet in our direction and said, "Funny time to be starting work."

I scrawled a phony name and said, "No sense digging in the heat of the day."

He said, "You got that right, Bubba."

Fraudulent and nervous, I blathered on. "Gotta dig around some palms. Check out if they got a root dis—"

Maggie kicked me in the ankle then. She was right to shut me up. We had the Cayo Hueso shirts, we'd signed the sign-in sheet; no one cared why we were digging. We stepped past the guard and moved coyly, indirectly toward the pair of palms that grew apart awhile then leaned together once again.

Along the way, we passed a clubhouse, in front of which a few people were sitting on a patio and sipping gin and tonics. We passed a couple brand- new houses trying to look old, with prefab picket fences and sash windows whose sills had never been leaned on by a human elbow. Here and there the ersatz paradise was littered with building materials waiting to be slapped up before the new development lost its cachet or was blown to pieces by the first good storm. We edged around a half- framed dwelling then cut across grass and sand to the trees that were our destination.

Stopping before them, we dropped our rakes and shovels. I could not resist an impulse to look back across my shoulder. But we were gardeners, there to do a grimy, sweaty job; we were being totally ignored.

I turned my attention to the pair of palms. Suddenly I was far less confident than I'd been at daybreak that they were the right trees, after all. They mostly looked like the pair that was closer to the fence. It was plausible that Kenny had been fooled by the reengineering of the coastline. But none of this was definite, and if it wasn't right, we'd accomplished zero. The thought made my shoulders slump.

I hid my doubts behind a tight little smile at Maggie. I picked up my shovel and started digging.

It was nasty work. The sun was low but hot; it hit us broadside, the whole length of our bodies. The sand was heavy, and grains cascaded from the edges of the shovel, undoing part of every heave. Then there were the roots; palms have lots and lots of them. They're woody as bamboo, and they arc down in thick tangled bunches. Those bunches stopped the shovel blade with an abruptness that bruised the hand and jarred the wrist.

I was quickly soaked with sweat. I stopped a moment to dry my face. I looked at Maggie, who dug with compact and rhythmic strokes. She glistened at the hairline and there were damp spots on her shirt. I went back to digging.

Nasty work—but with a primitive excitement in it too. Digging for treasure. Digging for anything. Scratching and clawing so that something hidden might be brought to light. Having a goal that could be reached at any moment.

But how deep did we have to dig? Kenny Lukens, in a hurry and probably without tools, would have dug a shallow hole. But what thickness of imported sand had been heaped on in the meantime? Two feet? Six feet? Did we have to dig deep as a mainland grave?